GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, warmer. We'll start out kinda frosty, but with winds from the southwest and full-on sunny skies, should be in the 50s by noon and into the low 60s in the afternoon. Temps will drop into the upper 30s tonight, but with breezes coming in from the south, we're getting set up for a fine day tomorrow.So, that high haze that's been giving us such sunsets? As you know, it's being caused by smoke from wildfires in Alberta—87 of them, as of Tuesday. NASA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 18 (if you're a weather geek, that's GOES 18) captured images of all that smoke from on high Monday, and NASA earth observatory turned them into a pretty striking photo—with accompanying article. (Thanks, JF!)The life of birds.
On the water — as in this photo essay from Ian Clark, featuring a pair of loons he's been following up in Newbury, VT, who've settled into springtime on their pond—and are ready to defend it against intruders.
And on horseback. Or, really, horse neck, where this self-possessed European starling has posed for John Pietkiewicz's photo from West Windsor.
Thetford names new town manager. In a press release yesterday, the Valley News reports, the selectboard announced that Johnson, VT town administrator Brian Story will take on the role June 19. Story announced that he was stepping down from his post in Johnson back at the end of March, the Morrisville News & Citizen reported, saying he wanted to work in a larger town and to "devote a little bit more time to the parts of the job that are my favorite parts of the job: personnel oversight and working with the human resources side of things.” He replaces Bryan Gazda, who's now Hartford's public works director.“I’m sort of blown away right now by the amount of people." Over the last half-year, Travis and Kendall Gendron have hosted a monthly "Out in Bradford" night—"Just a space to feel welcomed," the poster says—for the region's LGBTQ community at Vittles House of Brews, their brick-and-mortar Bradford VT beachfront. Vermont Public's Lexi Krupp dropped by recently to get a sense of the mood—which was, she reports, happy to be there. Vittles has taken some hits for hosting it, but the Gendrons shrug it off. "You can’t get that experience anywhere else within, like, a 30-, 50-mile radius," Kendall says.SPONSORED: Whole person health at Integrative Medicine at APD. Integrative Medicine at APD combines traditional medical care with centuries-old healing arts to help decrease stress, strengthen the immune system, reduce pain, and speed recovery. We offer massage, acupuncture, cupping, energy healing, and craniosacral therapy. Find contact information, providers, and more here. Sponsored by Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital.The smiler behind Woodstock's Town Smiler. Back during the pandemic, Adrian Tans—youth services director at the Norman Williams Public Library—commandeered the empty chalkboard at the corner of Elm and Central and began creating brilliant displays of chalk art. "It's like having Monet in your town," a resident tells Stuck in Vermont's Eva Sollberger. In her latest episode, which went up last night, Sollberger spends a sunny day watching Tans work, hearing from passers-by and townspeople, and talking to Tans about his art. "Everyone was looking for some relief and some joy," says Unicorn's Jeffrey Kahn, "and this provided it." (Hit the link, then the Tans episode.)Meanwhile, a more permanent art work takes shape in WRJ. Yep, the COVER mural is slowly starting to appear on the building's side, and NBC5's John Hawks dropped by to watch volunteers—in this case, Hartford High's AP Spanish class—at work with their paintbrushes and talk to COVER director Helen Hong about the community-driven nature of the project, to mural artist Julio Alejandro Muñoz about the concepts behind the art, and to HHS senior Gavin Farnsworth about the work. "May favorite part probably, getting 15 feet up there on the ladder, using the stick with the paintbrush on the end to reach the hard-to-get-parts," Farnsworth says."The xylophone might respond, 'If I do this, then you need to bring me two chickens.'" Laura McPherson is a linguist at Dartmouth who studies, among other things, tonal languages. But about a decade ago she got turned onto music used as a "surrogate language" among such peoples as the Sambla in Burkina Faso and Hmong in China and Southeast Asia. For the college's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, writer Agatha Bordonaro delves into McPherson's work, and her collaboration with Burkinabè musician Mamadou Diabaté studying how a xylophone can speak to an audience that knows how to hear it.Our word for the day: tokophobia. It's a pathological fear of childbirth, and it's the subject of a new study by Dartmouth anthropologist Zaneta Thayer. In the NYT (gift link), health reporter Roni Caryn Rabin writes that Thayer surveyed women in the US during the first ten months of the pandemic—which, she notes, likely had an impact on the results—and found that 62 percent of pregnant respondents reported high levels of fear and worry about childbirth, with black mothers twice as likely to report it as white mothers. The study also found that women with tokophobia "were almost twice as likely to have a preterm birth," though it's not clear if there's a causal relationship.Want to eat out vegan in the Upper Valley? It's possible. Though not always easy, reports Frances Mize in the VN. There's Black Magic Mexican, Heath Gosselin's food truck by Leb's Colburn Park. Burger King (!) in West Leb has an Impossible Whopper, and Nicole Bartner's Hartland Diner has a full vegan breakfast. "People drive here for the vegan menu,” Bartner says. At WRJ's Tuckerbox, about a fifth of the clientele are vegetarian or vegan, co-owner Vural Oktay tells Mize, so the baba ganoush is vegan, and the vegetable güveç (casserole) fully vegetarian. For more, you can join upper valley vegans on FB.In Canaan, "putting the pieces back together" from the Great Fire of 1923. It had been dry for weeks on June 2 that year, and when a hay bale caught fire in a barn near downtown, writes Lisa Rogak in NewHampshire mag, "the town didn't have a chance." Rogak details what happened—the buildings and lives destroyed—and how the town will observe the 100th anniversary. Among other things, artist Gary Hamel a few years back began excavating detritus that had been plowed into the Indian River, turning it into what he calls “assemblages." "All of these things in the river belonged to someone who lived before the fire, so they have memory and a story to tell," he says.On the Elizabeth Gurley Flynn historical marker: You knew there'd be an aftermath, right? NH historical highway marker policies, report NHPR's Olivia Richardson and Todd Bookman, require the State Historical Resources Council to review new ones as well as requests to retire old ones. But members of the council now say they were left in the dark on the state's decision to pull down the Flynn marker last week after NH Republicans objected to its creation. Gov. Chris Sununu said yesterday the state followed its formal policies. For the moment, the sign's in the hands of NHDOT, which is deciding what to do with it."The essential workforce behind every workforce.” That's how Airole Warden, policy strategy manager for the Coös Coalition for Young Children and Families, describes child care workers. Like other states, NH is struggling on that front, reports Beatrice Burack in NH Bulletin—the state has lost providers and licensed spots are going unfilled because of lack of staff. When you lose child care, Warden tells Burack, “you lose child care centers, you lose your police officers, your doctors, your snowplow guys.” Burack looks at legislative efforts to address the challenges, and the debate over how best to do so.Lots of uncertainty as "parental rights bill" heads for a vote in the NH House. Four GOP members voted against the House version, but at least one says he'll support the Senate version his chamber votes on today—and has co-sponsored an amendment to "strip four of the most controversial lines" from that bill, reports Steven Porter in yesterday's Globe Morning Report (no paywall). Which, in turn, has stoked vows from conservative members to vote against the bill if the amendment passes. In the narrowly divided House, every twist and turn today will matter. Stay tuned."What is it about New Hampshire that enabled the state to do so well in the pandemic?" It had the second-lowest death rate after Hawaii, according to a March study in The Lancet (VT wasn't far behind), and teasing apart that study's work, a team at the Council on Foreign Relations' ThinkGlobalHealth writes that the state's model performance came from two factors: low racial and socioeconomic disparities, and giving priority for vaccination early on to the medically vulnerable and other populations—racial minorities, the homeless, the medically homebound. (h/t to David Brooks' Granite Geek blog.)"People say, 'I'm not going to spray anything [for ticks]; I'm going to get me some opossums.'" To which U of RI researcher Thomas Mather replies, "Really? You're going to drive down to Walmart and pick some up?" Mather is part of a collaborative effort across the region to survey landowners and do lab work to learn what works—and doesn’t—in reducing ticks. In Seven Days, Anne Wallace Allen surveys the research here and throughout New England, and reports some of the findings from the field. It may be, for example, that certain invasive plant species boost tick populations, and that a particular fungus is an effective alternative to chemical pesticides.No such thing as a straight line. If the sound of kids laughing makes you grin, then you’ll want to watch these kids playing. The baby-goat kind of kids. In slo-mo. Accompanied by a Tchaikovsky waltz. Leaping through the air, twisting, climbing hay bales, always in motion, four hooves almost never on the ground at one time. It’s pure joy. The youngest are just a week old, say the owners of Sunflower Farm Creamery, in ME, and already wiser about how to move through this world than we’ll ever be.The Thursday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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At 5:30 today, AVA Gallery will present artist talks by Kathy Black and (at 6:15) Susan Calza. Black's current exhibition, Playing All Over the Map, looks at how maps "help us explore what it means to have a place on the planet" and in the universe. Calza's Our Hour is a video installation-with-sculptures that "contemplates the complicated beauty and poignant brevity of human existence. What we do here now and how we spend our time weave together our history."
Also at 5:30, in the Hanover Inn, Dartmouth’s Social Justice Awards evening will kick off with a keynote speech by Dr. Uché Blackstock, founding CEO of the New York-based group Advancing Health Equity. An emergency physician by training and a contributor to MSNBC, Blackstock and her organization work with healthcare organizations to address racism in healthcare and to eliminate racial health inequities. Her keynote is at 5:30, awards ceremony follows. There will be a livestream of the event (you'll find the link on the registration page).
And also at 5:30, Sustainable Woodstock presents an online talk by UVM forest ecophysiologist Ali Kosiba, "Vermont's Forests in a Changing Climate." She'll be focusing on how climate change and other stressors threaten forests, how we can manage them to increase their resiliency, and their role in storing carbon dioxide.
This evening at 6:30, the Howe Library hosts a talk by writer and UNH extension dairy and farm specialist John Porter, "The History of Agriculture as Told by Barns." Porter will look at NH's agricultural and economic development over the centuries through the lens of evolving barn architecture and styles. Sponsored by NH Humanities, this is both in-person in the Mayer Room and online.
This evening at 7, the Norwich Bookstore hosts Vermont poets Laura Foley and Sarah Dickenson Snyder as they read from and talk about their latest collections: Foley's It's This and Snyder's Now These Three Remain, both of them contemplative but acutely tuned into the world around.
Also at 7, Hop Film screens First Cow as part of its "Asian Diaspora on Screen" series. Kelly Reichardt's offbeat 2019 drama tells the story of the 1820s Oregon friendship between two misfit pioneers, a cook and a Chinese immigrant, who set themselves up to sell buttermilk biscuits—the only problem being the lack of milk. Until they find the first cow in the region.
At 8 this evening, Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover brings in Upper Valley Salsa, first for a half hour of salsa lessons, then open dancing from 8:30 to 11. Neither a partner nor experience necessary.
And finally, anytime, check out JAM's highlights for the week: Six local poets (Megan Buchanan, Robert S. Foote, Alan Hahnel, Taylor Mardis Katz, Ray Keifetz, and Hatsy McGraw) on the theme of "Renewal" at the Hartland Poetry Festival in April; UVM anthropologist Theresa Mares on the US food system at this month's First Wednesdays talk in Norwich; and all the action when Twin State Derby's Vixens met up with Roller Derby Quebec's Les Duchesses at Woodstock's Union Arena last month for their first post-pandemic derby.
And to start us off today...
In Southeast Asia, Sid Sriram packs stadiums. He's not as well known here--though he grew up in Fremont, CA (after moving there from Chennai, India). When he was three, his family taught him Carnatic music, the ancient South Indian musical tradition—but growing up, of course, he discovered
jazz, R&B, soul, and other less devotional genres.
A superstar partly for his Bollywood work, he's about to release his first English-language album (he normally sings in Tamil, Telugu, and other languages). A month ago,
an ode, he writes, to "
the deep longing to find and exist in spaces that feel like honest, open, clear, warm, liberating breaths of fresh air; home.
" The film was shot at the
Malibu Hindu Temple, with UCLA’s Raas Bataaka dance team definitely embellishing the visuals.See you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers, writers, and librarians who think you should read. this. book. now!
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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